The Regional Museum is the unmissable stop in Chelyabinsk, primarily for the centrepiece of its collection: the largest fragment of the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor recovered from the bottom of Lake Chebarkul. The 654 kg stone — dark, irregular, and oddly beautiful — sits under spotlights in a specially designed display case, and seeing it in person makes the scale of the event register in a way that dashcam footage cannot.
The wider museum covers the history of the South Ural from prehistoric times through the Cossack founding of Chelyabinsk, the industrial transformation of the Soviet era, and the wartime role of the city as Tankograd. The ethnographic and natural history sections are solid. Allow at least two hours.